Let's Duke it out

Krugman vs. Scarborough, Who Do You Have Your Money On?

03.04.13 9:01 PM ET

Nobel Prize winning economist and New York Times columnist Paul Krugman and former congressman and MSNBC host Joe Scarborough have a cute ongoing spat about deficit reduction. On Monday night (tonight!), they will duke it out on Charlie Rose (which airs on your local PBS station at 11 PM).

Krugman, author of End This Depression Now, has been calling for an increase in government spending in order to bolster job creation. He sees the long-term deficit as an issue that should be dealt with at a time of economic prosperity. Krugman claims that, "[a collapse because of entitlement spending is] a long way off, it's not necessarily even true.”

Scarborough, on the other hand, entirely disagrees. He is in favor of an austerity approach that he says would fix the American economy, as well as the deficit problem. To him, they are not mutually exclusive issues. In a recent column for Politico, Scarborough called Krugman a “self-consumed professor” whose views are “extreme,” even to other Keynesians.